My mother taught me that there are a million ways to love a tree, and in my youth I loved in each of them. I didn’t understand singular, monogamous love; I loved each tree I came across with abandon, tripping up into her branches if she were large enough, or sitting in his shade if he were still young, curled up with a book, often breathing in sunny summer air that is now tinted with the sepia color of memory.
She taught me to climb, my mother, and immediately regretted it. I was a terror on the ground to begin with, but in the branches of a tree, I was fearless, and she spent much of my childhood wincing and ordering me to get down while my father laughed and laughed and encouraged me to climb higher.
My mother taught me that there are a million ways to love a tree, and like so many of her lessons, I took it to heart; not to heart, I took it and carved it into my very soul, and there it stays, growing with me, changing shape as I do, a child’s carving into the bark of my being. I can’t escape this fundamental lesson that she taught me.
I loved all the trees, and I loved playing in their branches, but this is the story-- as they always are-- of a special one. I had been climbing for years when I first noticed her, settled on the outskirts of the forest, quiet and huge.
At first I couldn’t reach her first branch, that all-important tree-climbing branch-- the one that gets the whole process started. I jumped and shimmied, but her trunk was too big around and that branch was too high. I was a small child, wiry energy and enthusiasm made solid; slight and short. That branch was out of reach for me for a long time, but something drew me back to her, day after day. I climbed her anyway, to be sure-- I built ladders and stairs from detritus, climbed to that branch and sat there, contemplating my next step.
Every day I climbed higher, exploring little secret holes and spaces in that tree. In my child’s mind, she was a thousand feet tall, and hundreds of years old, but in reality she was smaller, younger, less impressive; everything seems bigger and grander as a child. I’d like to paint a picture of her, but my memory has left me fuzzy on the details.
I remember only the extremes: I remember counting her pine needles and discovering she was a white pine (three linked pine needles meant a red pine, five meant a white pine-- you can remember by spelling “red” and “white,” my mother told me). This seemed fitting for her somehow, but my child-brain was sketchy on symbolism, so it made only the most tenuous connection.
Before long, I skittered into her branches easily; my feet knew the places to step, my hands knew where to grip. I could climb with a book in one hand, or binoculars, or a bag; whatever struck my fancy. I went through a phase where I wanted to be a spy, and her branches offered me the protection needed to spy innocuously on the comings and goings in the neighbor’s yard without being caught.
I had a reading place in the crook of her branches, where her trunk split in two, nearly halfway up into her canopy. I read so many books there-- Harry Potter, CS Lewis; I led a thousand lives in that tree, which is maybe why she became my favorite.
I never built a treehouse in her branches, and my friends would always ask me why. They had a hard time climbing her, and never understood why or how I loved her so much. I would try to explain:
“I don’t want to hurt the tree,” I’d say, trying to articulate what my mother had taught me without sounding crazy. “Trees are important, they clean the air, and I like this tree.”
They’d look at me like I was crazy. “It’s a tree, it doesn’t feel pain,” they’d respond, “Let’s go play video games.”
I was never a video game player.
A childhood in the countryside is simultaneously idyllic, exciting, and painfully boring; when I turned twelve we left, moved away, thousands of miles away, into the suburbs. When I found out we were leaving I ran to the tree, climbed up into the spot where I had loved to read, and cried.
I hadn’t climbed the tree very often that year; perhaps I was getting older, convinced that I was too grown-up for such pursuits, but that doesn’t seem like me. It’s more likely that my mind was just on other things, other, newer adventures, but I never forgot the tree; she just became a footnote, less of a priority.
I went back, years later, and saw the tree. She was smaller than I remembered, her branches closer together, her trunk thinner, but at the same time, she was how I remember her.
My mother taught me that there are a million ways to love a tree, but I think the lesson I learned was a different one than the one she taught. I’ve never been good at general applications of specific principles. Her purpose was to instill in me a sense of environmental responsibility; to see me grow up and care about the harm I do to the planet, to teach me the campsite rule: leave it in better shape than you found it.
It’s good advice, to be sure, but should I ever have a child, I will teach them that there are a million ways to love a tree.
References
Forché, Carolyn, and Philip Gerard. Writing Creative Nonfiction: Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs. Cincinnati: Story Press, 2001. Print.
Hall, Donald. Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport, Mostly Baseball. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985. Print.
